wow that's the hottest deck of all time

This actually looks like a decent way for TPS to fight faster combo like Grim Long (if that even exists anymore), and perhaps things like Steel City Vault. I could definitely see boarding 2-3 of these in TPS if I anticipated a combo heavy metagame. Not sure if it'd be worth it against traditional Tezz, yeah it strips all their wins but I think as a TPS player you should be more focused on just comboing out before they do, as you should be about .5 turns faster than them anyway.

I've been entertaining the idea of having 4 Cunning Wish with Ancestral in the sideboard. Like TFK, Wish is a 2U instant. I see it as a TFK/Merchant Scroll hybrid. Not sure if that would be worth the loss of MD Ancestral to DT/MT/randomly draw, but it's an idea.

Whoa, Doomsday... what are the piles and minimum mana requirements for a winning Dday in that deck?

He uses Chalice because like Null Rod it helps keep his deck on-par with other more intrinsically powerful decks, while being an artifact to Weld (assuredly this is the reason for its inclusion over Shaman, et al)

That being said I have to say I agree that the deck should probably be running Tarmogoyf, mainly so that it is not so vulnerable to graveyard hate. Magus of the Moon also seems like it would be very good in combination with the other mana disruption.

Basically I think the best way to build this would be as a combination of TnT and Steve's RG beats deck. I dont have time to work out a full list, but you would want

4 Bazaar
4 Tarmogoyf
0-4 Magus of the moon
4 Welder
4 SotF
2-4 Squee
8 Spirit Guides
2-4 Large artifact dudes
8 Rod/Chalice

I think it might be worth it to splash blue for Ancestral, Time Walk, and Tinker, especially since Tinker would give you a viable route around stuff like leyline of the Void.

Sweet, dude. Glad you finally took one down.

I hope we're planning on lots of magics over the summer?

Well that proves it, Mana Drain is the most dominant card of the metagame.

I don't think the breaking-even on CA here is the issue here moreso than the huge loss of tempo (five mana to zero). While you're spending two turns drawing 1 card, they're doing whatever they want (casting other draw spells) while only investing 0 mana and 1 card to basically annul your relative progress.

I'm a pretty big fan of Sensei's Divining Top in TPS, usually 1-2 copies. It used to almost make the cut for me back when 4 BS was legal, but the fact that Brainstorm and Top itself interacted rather redundantly together stopped me from running it. Now that BS is gone, I find running a Top or 2 is very good. It has many benefits in the deck: It makes you draw 7's more like draw 10's, it protects from Duress, it stabilizes shaky-mana hands, and it makes your topdeck tutors a lot better. Finally, and more subtly, it makes FoW and misdirection much better cards, because with a Top out, you have the top 3 of your deck at your disposal to either find a blue card when you have FoW in hand, or find Fow/MisD when you have a blue card in hand. When you are Duressed and your opponent sees no FoW, or takes your only blue card, you can often blow them out by suddenly popping up with the necessary card via Top. Top also increases the utility of your off-color and colorless artifact acceleration, giving you something useful to do with your excess non-colored mana.

I view the following cards essentially as replacements for the missing 3 Brainstorms:

1 Ponder
1 Imperial Seal
1 Sensei's Top

The configuration of these 3 plus the 1 Brainstorm is actually not that noticeably weaker than 4 BS.

Not sure what you're trying to say there, Soly.

Why not use Dreadnought? A rough list would look like:

4 Dark Confidant
3 Dreadnought
1 V. Clique

4 Stifle
4 FoW
4 Duress/Thoughtseize
3 Daze
4 Null Rod

1 D Tutor
1 V Tutor
1 M Tutor
1 D. Consult
1 M. Scroll
1 Ancestral
1 Brainstorm
1 E. Truth
1 Trickbind
1 Ponder

2 Mox
1 Lotus
1 Petal
5 Strip
2 Factory
4 Delta
4 Sea
1 Island
1 Swamp


This list has a very low curve, a lot of disruption, huge guys, and an impressive tutor suite including Demonic Consult. You could easily tweak alot of the slots/numbers here, ie. Negate/Spell Snare > Daze, running more Duress effects, etc.

Oh, my bad then, I didn't see your subsequent post.

Did you get this from the 2nd place finish in Madrid or did they take your build to 2nd?

dicemanx: In the non-green Cunning Wish board you were talking about, where you drop the MD FoW's, how many FOWs and TFK's would you run in the board? Would the TFK's be cards you would board in or just Wish targets?

Also, how do you sideboard with that green sideboard posted above? (Against Drains, Ritual Combo, Fish, and Shops)?

dicemanx, if you were to add 2 or 3 Repeals to a Dragon list, what would it look like?

Ethersworn Canonist seems good here, I like it alot more than Fulms. Chains of Mephistopheles?

Ritual decks are in no way more difficult to play than Drain decks. It may take a certain amount of goldfishing and understanding of the deck's engines to figure out the mechanics of going off, but that in no way compares to the challenges of interactivity with opponents that Drain decks inherently come with. Mana Drain lends itself to the most skill-intensive and interactive types of gameplay. It is a skill-testing card whose power is a function of its controller's ability to leverage it vs. the opponent's knowledge of how to minimize its impact. For these reasons alone I think it should not be a candidate for restriction.

Also, I must say I really don't understand the mentality of the highest-played cards in a given metagame being automatic targets for restriction. There is always going to be a most-played card, a most-popular strategy. If you always want to restrict the most played card, you're going to want to restrict the next ones and the next ones and ad infinitum. I 100% agree with many peoples' calls to unrestrict as many cards as possible, increasing the number of broken strategies so that they play to one anothers' weaknesses and balance each other out. In a metagame where Trinisphere, Gush, and Mana Drain are all unrestricted, for example, the Gush decks beat the Drain decks while the 3 sphere decks hold the Gush decks in place, opening room for Ritual decks and Null Rod decks etc etc.

If we keep restricting cards left and right every time a new best deck emerges, which is always going to happen no matter what, very soon we're going to be playing Highlander. We pretty much are as it is given last Summer's massive and uncalled-for restrictions. Brainstorm and Scroll should definitely have been axed but restricting a cantrip, a card that is dependent on BS/Scroll to work, and a fragile combo card which is also very dependent on BS/Scroll was a heavy-handed act of knee-jerk blanket-policy that has set precedent towards turning this format into Highlander or Legacy + P9. That is not the way to go to make Vintage a serious and respectable format.

This is from desolutionist's post in the thread about unrestrictions, talking about Thirst for Knowledge's quality as a draw engine and you mentioned Compulsive Research being next-best-in-line to TFK. I'm wondering if Comp Research might actually be better in this TPS build than Thirst itself?
The thing about Thirst I noticed in this "TFK Long" list was that TFK is a really nice effect to be able to have in the deck because it is the cheapest and most potent draw engine available now that BS is gone, but the problem in a TPS deck like this is that you really want to be able to keep your artifact acceleration and would usually rather be pitching a land than a Mox to your draw spell. Plus, you usually need to play a mox to be able to run TFK out there early enough to matter (turn 2) so that is conflicting tension with the fact that you need to hold Artifacts to pitch. Given that there are few instants in TPS anyway, (you are rarely casting spells other than FoW during your opp's turn) I suspect Comp Research might actually be better than TFK in a deck like this. You'd much, much rather pitch lands after you already have 3 mana on board.


EDIT: I suppose TFK's usefulness in counterwars is an issue, but I can't really say how big of a deal that is as I haven't had much chance to test lately.

Gorilla Shaman seems incredibly stupid in this meta, have you considered him over R+R maindeck?

I'm experimenting with a TPS build running Thirst for Knowledge and 2-4 Chrome Mox. The moxen are intended to solve the two problems I noticed while trying your build out: 1.) too often you don't hit 3 mana with enough reliability to cast TFK when it matters, and 2.) you often do not have an artifact to pitch (usually because you have to play out your moxes in order to play TFK in the first place). I think Chrome Mox does a good job of mitigating both of these issues; it gives you 1-2 more mana sources without having to dilute the deck with more lands, and it makes TFK a much better card. It's also very good with Bargain/Jar/Twister.

Here's the list I'm working with now:

1 Island
1 Swamp
3 Underground Sea
4 Polluted Delta
2 Cephalid Coliseum
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Black Lotus
5 Moxen
1 Mana Crypt
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mana Vault
1 Sol Ring
2 Chrome Mox
4 Dark Ritual

1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Time Walk
4 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Gifts Ungiven
4 Force of Will
1 Misdirection
4 Duress
1 Tinker
1 Timetwister
1 Necropotence
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Yawgmoth's Bargain
1 Mind's Desire
1 Memory Jar
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Chain of Vapor
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Rebuild



Thoughts?

I like the deck. I'm curious why you're not running Necropotence or Memory Jar (especially Necro). To me Necro over probably Frantic Search seems like an obvious inclusion. It seems even better here than in normal TPS because you have Thirst to both keep you going if you get Necro-locked, and to pitch Necro itself if it is too late in the game.

I really like your inclusion of Coliseum. I think you've found a really good innovation here. That card looks so hot, it makes me excited to play Magic.

Well I goldfished a few times and I ran into problems while going off where I only had colorless mana and couldn't cast Fabricates or Personal Tutors to keep going; so having more mana filters in the form of Spheres would help there. And you are running lots of 3 and 5 mana cards so I feel like having the other three moxen (at least Jet) and Sol Ring/Crypt/Vault would get you off the ground faster.

It seems like you might be better served by running more artifact acceleration and 4 Chromatic Spheres to go with the stars, maybe replacing the Tops.

He has Repeal for that purpose, which does it better for no loss of CA.
Thran Turbine is interesting, as it lets you cast Meditate on the cheap and pay for Remora.
Sower of Temptation seems a lot better than Old Man.

EDIT: Scratch that second part, I just RTFC. Using it only to help Remora is definitely way too narrow.

You don't want any Trinket Mages in here? Seems rather good. You could easily cut a Relic, a Top, and something else for 2 Mages and an Engineered Explosives.

What would you cut for the 4th Chrome Mox?

With the 4 Seas and without the Vault + Petal, thats only 59 (I Believe). Do you run Tormods main or something?

You're missing some cards there.... I assume some number of Underground Seas, maybe Mana Vault + Lotus Petal?

This might be slightly off-topic, but has anyone thought of combining Sharuum with Mindslaver in an Oath build? You could run a set of TFK's, a couple Sharuums, 2 Slavers, and the Vault combo. That way you would pretty much be guaranteed of winning with a single Oath activation as long as you have 4 colorless mana.